Take Left, 038; exit

Participation in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections was always expected to reinforce for the Left the geographical limits to its expansion beyond West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. But read the results a while longer and in the shifting political stakes you can find signs of the subversive role being played by the communist parties in this country8217;s politics. UP is the playing ground where, even after the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, they have been nurturing their dreams of a third front. And the Samajwadi Party is the entity around which all their futuristic dreams of a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative coalesce. Just last month, CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat looked kindly but, for now, unsupportingly at Mulayam Singh Yadav8217;s assembly of out-of-power former chief ministers of other states. Ruling out withdrawal of support, for now, to the UPA government, he said, 8220;We will take our time and build it properly and work towards a third alternative.8221;

How does this dual programme work, this support to the Congress-led government at the Centre and to the possibilities of a third alternative? The third alternative gains viability when the bases of the two national parties 8212; Congress and BJP 8212; are so eroded that they cannot together command more than half the seats on offer, and thereby can both be factored out of a governing coalition. To this end, the communists have chipped away at the autonomy of the Congress-led UPA, to which they offer just outside support, to evolve its own agenda for governance 8212; while retaining the right nonetheless to criticise and undermine the government8217;s actions. In this scheme, the intended beneficiaries of the communists8217; 8220;oppositional8221; tactics are the motley constituents of a possible third front.

But here is the catch. It does not work. In UP, the Congress has failed to increase its tally, but so has the SP. The kind of community-based mobilisation that the Left along with the SP encouraged while attacking the UPA8217;s foreign policy has thankfully been rejected by the electorate. This time Mayawati, who takes seriously only the two national parties as possible post-poll allies, has won a majority for the first time for any party in more than a decade in UP. But the Left cannot avert interrogation over its dangerous, and overt, programme of trying to hollow the centre of India8217;s politics. UP shows, as did Assam last May, that the Left has nothing viable to fill that vacuum with.